Long Read - A Mayan Quest For A Market Economy - Noragric Blog

Long read: A Mayan quest for a market economy - Noragric blog
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 2021 June 30 Long read: A Mayan quest for a market economy

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Long read: A Mayan quest for a

market economy
 June 30, 2021

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Written by Noé Mendoza, PhD Fellow at Noragric.
Protected by the jungle canopy, crickets and frogs emit a gnawing chorus. There’s a
moment in the early hours of the morning when their frenetic singing gently
subsides, and you can enjoy the dance of the foliage caressed by the wind. It was
during these couple of hours that I sleeplessly paced the streets of San Gabriel
village. Despite my best efforts to walk gently, after a short time it seemed that all
the dogs in the village had registered my presence. Furious barking came from all
https://blogg.nmbu.no/noragric/2021/06/30/long-read-a-mayan-quest-into-market-economy/[02.07.2021 21:05:15]
directions. For the distrustful canines, a stranger that prowls at unusual hours near
their domain can only be interpreted as a menace.
The village of San Gabriel at night. Photo: Noé Mendoza
I was heading to an appointment, with a 4 a.m. start necessary for the long round
trip. The purpose: transporting charcoal to the city of Playa del Carmen. Around
4:15, the rumble of a Ford F350 lorry managed to drown out the canine cacophony,
rudely interrupting what had started as a peaceful early morning in a village in the
Mayan Rainforest.
The driver Norberto, President of the Commissariat of the Ejido[1] and Director of

the cooperative Carboneros del Sureste (CASUR), greeted me with unusual
lethargy. “Won’t Mr. Alberto come?”, I asked him. “Alberto is busy today”, he
replied, “but Aureliano will be coming instead”.
Shortly, Aureliano approached the lorry with a similar countenance to Norberto’s –

that of a sleep deprived man with an empty stomach.
With reluctant haste, Norberto and Aureliano cleared out the load compartment of
the lorry, until only a heavy, dusty tarp and a set of thick and splintered ropes
remained. The three of us climbed inside the driver’s cabin. I occupied the middle
position. At 04:30 a.m., the lorry began to move. We left for Chacte’ob Ejido, where
we would pick up our cargo.
Charcoal is produced year-round in San Gabriel, but that week the charcoal
warehouse was almost empty. The Ejido San Gabriel has a Forestry Management
Plan that allows it to commercialize approximately 200 tons of charcoal annually.
CASUR is part of a peasant-lead commercialization mechanism, through which
they can sell their commodities directly to hotels and restaurants on the touristic
Mayan Riviera. The commercialization platform has a warehouse in Playa del
Carmen, and they co-manage it with other rural organizations and civil society
entities. One of the objectives of the project is to get rid of middlemen and thereby
obtain larger profit margins, in parallel to incentivizing the orderly management of
the forest.
Production of charcoal in the authorized area for forestry management in San Gabriel, Mexico. Photo:
Noé Mendoza
Whilst the cooperative’s marketing channel seems to show promise, it poses

challenges for the members of CASUR. Its clients – hotels and restaurants –
demand small quantities of the product delivered on a weekly basis, unlike the
former middlemen who bought whole trailers at a time, picking up the charcoal in
the village themselves when the Ejido had enough product in its warehouse. Since
its creation in 2017, CASUR’s commercialization project has achieved some of its
objectives. In recent months, however, the cooperative has found it difficult to

collect enough charcoal. In the village, other families became eager to collect and
sell charcoal supported by the former middlemen, who were upset by the
cooperative’s aspiration to sell directly to hotels and restaurants.
To solve the friction and disagreement among its members, the Ejido assembly
agreed to divide the total authorized charcoal production among every Ejido
member so that each person could sell to whoever they chose: to the cooperative or
to the former middlemen.
The previous arrangement in San Gabriel Ejido granted CASUR the exclusive use of
the authorized amount of charcoal, to strengthen the position of charcoal producers
in the market. Now the cooperative is unsure how much charcoal they can produce
and collect each week. This situation has hindered its capacity to meet the goal of
regularly supplying its clients in the Mayan Riviera with charcoal.
The charcoal warehouse of CASUR in San Gabriel. Photo: Noé Mendoza
Along with its external allies, CASUR determined that it should buy charcoal to
other Ejidos who have legal permits to produce and transport it. With such
agreements, CASUR can maintain a constant supply to its customers whenever

there is not enough charcoal in San Gabriel due to internal competition in the
village. Therefore, CASUR forged an alliance with the Ejido Chacte’ob. They would
provide the amounts that CASUR could not produce. The alliance implied that
CASUR would be in charge of loading the charcoal in Chacte’ob and would take it to
the warehouse in Playa del Carmen.
At 5:15, we stopped for breakfast at the municipal food market of José María
Morelos. After a couple of tortillas filled with pork, Norberto and Aureliano
regained vitality and exchanged some chat in Mayan over an ice cold Coke. I
ordered a papaya juice. We resumed our journey. I tried to engage Norberto in
conversation.
“It is a pity that the wood that is cut down in the Milpa just stays there, and it is not
possible to legally produce charcoal with it, don’t you think?”, I asked Norberto.
“Yeah. In the Milpa a lot of wood ends up lying there. If it is not transformed into
charcoal, most of it rots. People are looking for high forest to cut because the corn
grows better there – but when you cut tall trees, not all the wood will burn. The
wood that does not burn is what people use for charcoal”, Norberto explained.
In San Gabriel, CASUR enforces compliance with the forestry law by persuading
charcoal producers to restrict their activity to the areas authorized for forestry
management by the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources.
Nevertheless, many Ejido members have fought for permission to produce charcoal
with wood obtained at their Milpas, outside the area of forestry management. To
make Milpa – the traditional technique used for corn, beans and squash crops – it
is customary to cut down and burn patches of forest to prepare the soil for sowing.
In San Gabriel, it is a common practice to reserve a quarter of the wood that lies on
the ground after cutting, to make charcoal in situ. This practice is not in accordance
with Mexican environmental legislation, which states that wood can only be
extracted or transformed in fixed areas authorized by the Secretariat of
Environment and Natural Resources. The law does not consider Milpa to be a valid
forest management technique.
We drove in a south-easterly direction. This dry season was preceded by almost

zero rainfall the previous winter. The low forest already looked defeated by the lack
of water, their leafless branches pointed at the sky imploring the summer rains. As
we turned to the east at an almost imperceptible pace, we left behind the
landscapes of short vegetation that characterize the northern and central Yucatan
Peninsula. The foliage became greener and more elevated as we penetrated the
evergreen rainforests that foretell the proximity of the Caribbean beaches. Our view
of the road became momentarily blurred by strips of fog that ran across the
windshield like transparent fingers. Despite the difficult visibility, Norberto drove
smoothly, managing to avoid the cracks in the ground that became more recurrent,
threatening to devour the tires at every turn. Aureliano took a nap.
Before reaching Chacte’ob, we crossed two towns. We passed school children in

their neat school uniforms and young women waiting for public transport. Groups
of men gathered separately on their small motorbikes. A few minutes down the
road, this scene was replaced by small motorized congregations of youngsters
equipped with tarnished chainsaws and ragged backpacks.
“The wood brings them into action here”, said Norberto, referring to the youngsters
from Ejido Chacte’ob beginning their working day.
Chacte’ob is one of the largest Ejidos in Quintana Roo, at more than 150 square
miles. Here, communitarian forestry is an essential economic activity that provides
sustenance to a large portion of its approximately 1,000 inhabitants. Its dense
evergreen forests not only protect a blazing universe of tropical birds and
endangered mammals, they are also home to a wide variety of tree species of high
commercial value. The multi-layered canopy that protects the terrestrial fauna from
the relentless sun is sustained by hundreds of tree species that the youngsters of
Chacte’ob selectively extract for sale at the market. Other activities linked with the
forested landscape, such as ecotourism projects, beekeeping – and charcoal
production – complement the income of the Chacte’oban families.
Itching to load the charcoal, Norberto parked the lorry in the area surrounding the
main square of the town. His haste was justified; our journey would not take us
back to San Gabriel before dusk unless all the manoeuvres were executed with
utmost efficiency.
The person in charge of coordinating the delivery of charcoal in Chacte’ob was not
at home, we were told. We had no choice but to wait.
After 20 minutes, a dilapidated Tsuru parked next to us. It was driven by Mariano,
member of the directive board of the Ejido and the man in charge of the charcoal.
He greeted us with contagious enthusiasm. He explained that he had been
“supervising work inside the forest”, that he did not have the permits ready, and
that he still needed to find the keys of the Ejido office and fill in the documents.
More waiting.
Mariano left then returned, accompanied by two young men. Now with diminished
fervour, he explained that the Ejido had ran out of permits. As an alternative, it was
possible to ask the neighbouring Ejido Doroteo Arango for help. Norberto and I got
in the Tsuru while Aureliano and Mariano’s two companions began loading the
sacks of charcoal into the lorry.
“Can we get a permit from the Doroteo Arango people?”, I asked. “Don’t worry,
Mister – it won’t take long”, answered Mariano. The town of Doroteo Arango lies
beside a heavily transited federal motorway, but has an ambience of quietness in its
streets that contrasted to the hectic morning activity that we witnessed at sunrise in
Chacte’ob. After a brief pilgrimage, we found the man in charge of the forestry
permits. Mariano explained in succinct terms what our mission entailed. Without
much hesitation, the man nodded, got on his motorbike and came back half an hour
later with a folder packed with green sheets of paper. He delivered the desired
document to Norberto, who proceeded to diligently read the permit.
“This demands patience…”, I said to Norberto as he finished filling in the permit.

“That’s right – and we haven’t even started yet”, said Norberto calmly as the clock
hit 9:30.
Back in Chacte’ob, the refreshing humidity of the early morning was substituted by
intense, cloudless heat. Aureliano sheltered himself under the gentle shade of a
Ramón tree (Brosimum alicastrum), approximately 65 feet high. His face and arms
were covered by a fine layer of black particles, as were the faces of the two young
men that Mariano brought for loading the charcoal. 160 sacks of charcoal were
neatly stacked onto the lorry. A couple of empty Coke bottles rolled next to their
feet. A reward for getting the job done.
Lorry with 160 sacks of charcoal in Chacte’ob. Photo: Noé Mendoza
We left Chacte’ob for the north-east wanting to make up lost time. The series of
obstacles we had faced so far made me think about the controversial infrastructure
project, the Mayan Train. The project is promoted with vehemence by the Federal
government. It’s depicted as the key transformation that will unleash development
in an ‘abandoned region’, as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador refers to the
Yucatan Peninsula’s rural areas. The Mexican government claims that the train will
exponentially increase the flux of tourists in rural areas beyond the touristic cities
of the Mexican Caribbean. The train stations will be accompanied by ambitious
urbanization projects that intend to attract large touristic and agro-industrial
private investments in impoverished areas of the Peninsula.
The development promises of the Mayan Train has been contested by multiple
activists, academics and indigenous organizations that fear the train and the
urbanization project will oversee environmental regulations, and open the door to
extractive industries whose effects have largely proven to be detrimental to the
environment and local populations. Aureliano is critical towards the train. He has
actively participated in workshops led by the Assembly of Territory Defenders
Much Xiin Baal, where indigenous leaders disseminate critical reflections about the
Mayan Train and Mayan culture with communities that will be affected by the
mega-project.
“It is a project that will benefit big companies who are looking for new territories. It
won’t benefit us”, reflected Aureliano. Norberto has a more nuanced view, but is
still sceptical. “The government plans sound OK, but you can never tell what will
really happen”.
As I saw in CASUR’s income statements, transportation and logistics are their most
significant cost. A railway network connecting the rural areas with the dynamic
markets of the Mexican Caribbean could be a convenient, cost shrinking tool for
communitarian initiatives like CASUR, which are trying to improve their position in
value chains. It could also, however, reinforce the former middlemen’s strength, if
the latter are the ones who use the train to enhance their businesses.
We slowly traversed the lonely country roads of the Mayan rainforest, the recurrent
dips on the road keeping us alert. At around 10:30, we merged onto federal road
307, which connects the touristic destinations of the Mayan Riviera. We passed the
city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the spiritual and organizational headquarter of
Mayan rebels at war with the Yucatecan elites settled in Merida during the second
half of the 19th century. Today, the city marks the start of the most dangerous
section of the road. Towards the north, a track of 60 miles separates Felipe Carrillo
Puerto from Tulum. Accidents, kidnappings and robbery have occurred with
increasing frequency here in the last 5 years.
In the State of Quintana Roo, the violence associated with drug cartels pulses from
the north-eastern tip to the rest of the Peninsula, with Cancun its point of origin.
Whilst the zone between Carrillo Puerto and Tulum is the most recent frontier of
criminal violence, these risks were not the ones that distressed Norberto and
Aureliano. Their worries were triggered by the anticipation of an encounter with the
Federal Police – recently transformed into the National Guard. Weeks before our
trip, Norberto told me about these incidents:
“Almost always, they tell us that the charcoal should have a sales invoice. I tell
them, ‘No, Boss, because this charcoal goes to a warehouse from the same
cooperative. The permit should be enough’. Usually, the police take the permit and,
contravening the correct legal procedure, they say: Follow me folks, we will meet
on the next bridge”, obliging Norberto to drive the lorry with charcoal for which he
can no longer legally account for if the military or police pulls them over again.
Norberto recounts that on one occasion, the Federal Police pulled them over in
Carrillo, and then again before reaching Playa del Carmen. “I told the second one
‘hey boss, we already offered our share to the policemen of Carrillo’. He answered:
‘It doesn’t matter! Those were state troopers, we are something different’. It is part
of the game. What can we do about it?”
Aureliano also has plenty of anecdotes about these encounters. “They tell us:
‘Instead of moving your charcoal from the village to the city, you should simply
sell it in your Ejido and release an invoice. Why are you complicating your
life?’. There is no way to win over them. They have suggested we go and talk to the
regional manager to reach an agreement. People say that all the major transport
companies go through them to avoid problems. I don’t know, that sounds
expensive”.
For each journey to Playa del Carmen, CASUR budgets around $500 mxn for
bribing the Federal Police.
Aureliano recalls: “The first time they pulled us over we offered a $200 mxn bill.
We had no more. ‘Don’t fuck with me’, the policeman told me”.
“They always find something”, Noberto adds. “It can be the insurance, the invoice,
having old tires. We know those are only pretexts. Even if we had everything in
place”.
A quarter of an hour later, after passing Carrillo Puerto, my sleepiness was

interrupted when Norberto stopped on a parking shoulder in front of a patrol
vehicle of the Federal Police.
“Are they pulling us over?”, I asked. “Yep. I’ll be right back”, answered Norberto,
while he grabbed a folder and put some bills in his shirt pocket.
Norberto chatted with two uniformed agents. Their verbal exchange projected an
air of cordiality, at least from the perspective offered by the wing mirror. Aureliano
got out of the car to make a phone call. I followed him to stretch my legs and get a
bit closer to the agents of the National Guard. I placed myself a couple of metres
away from Norberto displaying a big smile, sunglasses on.
“It was about time to stretch the legs!”, I said with a friendly tone. The policemen
looked at me for a couple of seconds without any major reaction. They paused their
chat. One of them said, “Alright. Wait for me in your vehicle. We will check this
out”.
Pulled over by the Federal Police. Photo: Noé Mendoza
We all went back inside the lorry. After a quarter of an hour, one of the policemen
made a hand gesture to Norberto through the wing mirror. The driver got down
immediately and came back in less than a minute.
“It’s done. I had to give them $800 mxn. They said it was because our suspension
was crooked, that we exceeded 100 km/hour when the limit for load trucks is 80,
and because we are carrying more than 3.5 tonnes. They always find something.
The fine would have been of around $6,000 mxn”.
Indeed, the lorry has an authorized load capacity of 3.5 tonnes and in Chacte’ob we
loaded almost 4. About the speed, it was hard to tell because our speedometer
didn’t work, but I doubt that we were close to 100 km/hr with the 160 sacks on
board. Acknowledging the meagre profit margins and the huge scalability
challenges that CASUR’s business model faces, I wonder whether it would be
economically viable to keep up with all the legal and technical components needed
to avoid extorsions or fines in the Mexican motorways. I thought again about how
convenient it would be to move larger volumes of charcoal by train. Luckily, we did
not find any other patrol ahead.
Soon, we had lunch in the next city: Tulum. This time, instead of eating in a
traditional food market – places rarely found in the young cities of the Mayan
Riviera – we entered a small restaurant next to the motorway. Our jeans and shirts
stained with black spots contrasted with the bright colours and light beach clothing
worn by the other customers. I noted that Norberto and Aureliano were struggling,
uneasily turning the pages of a menu that offered a wide variety of dishes in
contrast to the pork tacos on offer at the food market in José María Morelos. I
recommended some options, but when the waiter came over, they simply said, “The
same as him. And a Coke”.
We hit the road again. After Tulum, the road shifted from being a two laned semi-
motorway to a full motorway of four or five lanes. The flux of vehicles became
denser and more frenetic as we approached Playa del Carmen. The transit is
composed of lorries of all sizes, vans packed with tourists and private cars with one
or two passengers, all in a hurry. Heading north, the road is no longer flanked by
tall trees, but by majestic entrances of all-inclusive hotels displaying Anglo-Saxon
names evocative of sun and beach paradise scenery. The vast gardens and
monumental signs of the hotel corporations stand with pride between the road and
the highly valuable Caribbean sands. Passing the hotel area, the hasty drivers seem
to disregard the low-skilled workers running with reckless hurry across the
motorway to reach the public transport on the other side of the road. The cooks and
maintenance personnel standing at the roofless bus stops, juxtaposed against the
grandiose hotel entrances.
We arrived at the warehouse in Playa del Carmen at 14:00. The staff there told me
they recently moved to a new location because the former warehouse was smaller.
The neighbourhood had registered a frightening increase in robberies of businesses
and households.
“The situation here is dire. Last week a guy was shot to death on this street”. The
staff showed me a newly installed security camera system that they bought after the
store next door was robbed. The locals refer to this city as Playa del Crimen (Crime
Beach).
“Are you still selling as much charcoal as before? Hasn’t COVID hit the city yet?”, I
asked them. “It seems that orders are slowly going down, but we are still delivering
a lot of charcoal”, the chief of staff replied.
Discharging charcoal in Playa del Carmen. Photo: Noé Mendoza
In less than an hour, Norberto, Aureliano and the staff discharged the lorry and
filled in administrative forms. When the clock hit 15:00, we were back on the road.
At least now our vehicle didn’t tilt.
The journey back home went without interruption. There were no encounters with
the police – they never occur on the return trip. We stopped only once to get
refreshments. In the rural areas of the Yucatan Peninsula, buying something to
drink is a synonym of buying Coke or related sugared alternatives. In the small
shops of villages and towns, sometimes it is hard to find bottled water. The music
selection changed to an eclectic mix provided by Aureliano, consisting of reggaeton
alternated with the folk songs of Vicente Fernandez. The journey was much shorter
since we didn’t deviate to Chacte’ob.
After passing Tulum, we left the federal motorway and re-joined the country roads
right around the time when the sun stops irradiating heat and the fresh winds from
the north descend upon the forest. In the first town we crossed, I observed a
modern bus stamped with the flashy logos of a big hotel. From it emerged workers
carrying small suitcases. They wore tidy white uniforms with golden letterheads
attached to their shirts. I imagined these people going home, taking off their
uniforms, putting on shorts and light shirts and maybe watching television whilst
swinging on their hammocks. Maybe the next day they’ll join a family member to
the Milpa, and through these actions they’ll reintegrate into the Mayan lifestyle –
which seems like a distant universe here next to the touristic corridor . The modern
hotel bus looked alien rolling along the streets of this town. Our creaky lorry went
unnoticed, blended with ease into the rural scenery. It was the sensation of being
home again.
By 5 p.m. I was already exhausted, and my buttocks were seriously numb.

Norberto, on the other hand, looked vital and in a rush to reach the town Tihosuco.
He expected to buy construction material there before the sun went down.
Mr. Alberto asked me to get some sand. That’s a good way to avoid coming back
with an empty trunk, Norberto explained.
I could only observe with astonishment how Aureliano and Norberto shovelled a
significant number of kilos of sand at a fast pace. Fortunately for me, there were
only two shovels available.
Loading sand in Tihosuco, to be used in construction. Photo: Noé Mendoza
An hour later we were back in San Gabriel, with no sun in the horizon but still a dim
blue sky. That is the precise moment when mosquitoes are out to feast.
“We’ve been at this for 14 hours!”, I exclaimed when I saw my watch as we entered
San Gabriel.
“That’s how it is. A long trip”, replied Norberto, now with visible signs of exhaustion
in his eyes.
I said goodbye to my travel companions in the main square of the village where
people always hang out, be it under the protection of an old palm-leaf roof or in the
soccer courtyard next to it. This evening, the neighbouring village of San Jorge
joined a friendly soccer match against the San Gabriel team. A couple of lamps
hanging loose from 4m high poles illuminating the ball and the players. Seated in a
dispersed pattern at the sides of the courtyard, a dozen youngsters followed the
match, their attention and jokes alternating between their cell phones and the
players. Aureliano joined the spectators and Norberto went home.
I have seen most of these young people actively participating in the production of
charcoal, in the Milpas and in the Ejido assemblies. Some of them have shared with
me their past experiences as low skilled workers in Playa del Carmen and Cancun.
Most of them came back to San Gabriel when charcoal became a prominent activity
and decided to establish themselves permanently in the village. Even though
charcoal and Milpa offer a comparatively lower income than the salaries of the city,
it seems to be good enough to access what they say is a good life in an environment
that offers them less dangers than urban life.
The current preference of San Gabriel youngsters to make a living in their village
seem so different to what I heard in the consultations on the Mayan Train. There,
Ejido leaders of the Yucatan Peninsula claimed that they would support the
governmental plans to build the train and establish new urban centres if new jobs
will benefit their youngsters. Critics to the Mayan Train warn that the jobs created
by the construction of the train and the touristic and agro-industrial investments
will be precarious and hyper concentrated in the new urban areas. It seems
uncertain whether the rural lifestyle of the Mayans will be strengthened by a
virtuous interaction with market forces, or if their indigenous culture will be further
marginalized.
The youth of San Gabriel dress and speak in different ways from their parents. They
listen to different types of music and project different values, but they share with
the previous generation the quality of being an Other, an alien group, which is at
the same time linked with the political and financial forces that pulse with
increasing vigour from the touristic cities of the Mayan Riviera. As I talk to them
and they invite me to enjoy the match with another Coke, I wonder what their
situation will be in the following years.
[1] Ejido is a collective property form of land tenure created during the agrarian
reform that the Mexican State brought about throughout the 20th century.
_____________________
To protect the identity of the protagonists, the names of some places, all of the
people and organizations that appear in this article were modified and faces in
the images have been blurred.
Noé Mendoza is a PhD Fellow at the Department of International Environment and

Development Studies (Noragric). His research seeks to enhance our understanding
of the relationship between economic inequality and environmental change,
focusing on a case-study in the Mayan Rainforest.
Related Posts:
1. Indigenous Peoples: Moving beyond the UNFCCC Platform
2. Winners and Losers at COP25
3. Mentalities of greening, governing, and getting rich
4. What happened to the Spirit of Paris? Indigenous Peoples at
COP24 in Katowice, Poland
 Posted in Governance, Indigenous peoples, Natural Resource Management

 Tagged Charcoal production, Forestry, Latin America, Mayan Rainforest, Mexico, Natural Resource
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 2021 June 30 Long read: A Mayan quest for a market economy

Long read: A Mayan quest for a

 June 30, 2021

Written by Noé Mendoza, PhD Fellow at Noragric.

The village of San Gabriel at night. Photo: Noé Mendoza

The driver Norberto, President of the Commissariat of the Ejido[1] and Director of

Shortly, Aureliano approached the lorry with a similar countenance to Norberto’s –

we would pick up our cargo.

Whilst the cooperative’s marketing channel seems to show promise, it poses

objectives. In recent months, however, the cooperative has found it difficult to

The charcoal warehouse of CASUR in San Gabriel. Photo: Noé Mendoza

agreements, CASUR can maintain a constant supply to its customers whenever

forest management technique.

We drove in a south-easterly direction. This dry season was preceded by almost

Before reaching Chacte’ob, we crossed two towns. We passed school children in

“This demands patience…”, I said to Norberto as he finished filling in the permit.

Lorry with 160 sacks of charcoal in Chacte’ob. Photo: Noé Mendoza

private investments in impoverished areas of the Peninsula.

We had no more. ‘Don’t fuck with me’, the policeman told me”.

A quarter of an hour later, after passing Carrillo Puerto, my sleepiness was

Pulled over by the Federal Police. Photo: Noé Mendoza

Discharging charcoal in Playa del Carmen. Photo: Noé Mendoza

By 5 p.m. I was already exhausted, and my buttocks were seriously numb.

Loading sand in Tihosuco, to be used in construction. Photo: Noé Mendoza

the images have been blurred.

Noé Mendoza is a PhD Fellow at the Department of International Environment and

 Posted in Governance, Indigenous peoples, Natural Resource Management

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